‘I’ve had plenty of time and space.’ I slid my hand away. ‘I’m a bit shaken up by revisiting everything, but please don’t worry about me. You should be giving all your time to your family.’
‘He had feelings for you,’ said Max. ‘That’s pretty clear.’
‘He wasn’t entitled to have feelings for me.’ I could hear the steel in my own voice. ‘He had a pregnant wife, and a son. They were the people he should have had feelings for.’
Max nodded.
‘So,’ I said, after another silence. ‘To get back to my question. Are you staying long?’
‘The weekend.’ His tone was light again, as though we were casual friends and hadn’t been speaking of anything more taxing than our plans for the next few days. ‘The hotel would only take a reservation for a minimum of two nights.’
‘I was surprised you got one at all.’
‘Lucky, I guess.’ He glanced around the terrace.
All the tables were full now, although it was the guests from overseas who were eating proper meals while the Spanish themselves were, like us, snacking on peanuts and olives.
‘They don’t eat much before nine,’ I said when he remarked on this. ‘It’s too hot.’
‘Would you like something to eat yourself?’ asked Max.
I shook my head.
‘I’ve succumbed to the timetable,’ I said. ‘I hardly ever eat before nine, either. Mostly I just graze. Anyhow, I’m not hungry.’
‘Perhaps tomorrow?’ He looked at me inquiringly. ‘Lunch perhaps? I feel as though . . . well, I’ve come all this way to confront you and you’re not the evil scheming bitch I’d half expected you to be. I need to apologise.’
‘You think lunch will make me feel better?’ I shook my head.
‘Of course not. But . . . I’d like to . . . I feel I should . . .’
I couldn’t have lunch with Brad’s brother. It would be too hard. And too . . . too weird. But Max was looking at me with his solemn gaze, so like Brad’s and yet so different, and I suddenly found myself nodding slowly.
‘We could go to Beniflor Costa,’ I said.
‘Whatever you think.’
‘It’ll have a nice sea breeze.’
‘OK.’
‘I’ll pick you up,’ I told him.
‘Oh, no. I’ll drive,’ he said. ‘I can’t possibly expect you to—’
‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘I’m the one who’s living here, after all.’
‘Maybe. But it seems . . . I’d like to drive you. To be the one taking you to lunch.’
‘You’d have to find the Villa Naranja,’ I reminded him. ‘Which isn’t an easy task on an empty stomach.’
He laughed, and suddenly his eyes lightened and his face seemed ten years younger.
‘I’m good at directions.’
‘In that case . . .’ I took a pen from my bag and sketched them out on one of the napkins.
‘What time?’ he asked.
‘The Spanish usually eat around two p.m.,’ I told him. ‘But we’ll never get a table if we wait till then. So if you get to me around twelve thirty, we can be in Beniflor Costa before one.’
‘Whatever you say. You have my phone number, just in case.’
I saved his name against the Unknown Caller, then stood up.
So did he.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he said.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
He held out his hand and shook mine. I’d almost moved forward for the casual cheek-to-cheek kisses that all the Spanish people took for granted. But this was different. Very different.
And then I walked through the hotel and drove home.
Chapter 26
Even though meeting Max Hollander had been traumatic, I was feeling a lot calmer by the time I returned to the house. Banquo greeted me with a gentle headbutt and followed me inside, where I got my priorities straight by taking the dried food out of the cupboard and refilling his bowl before pouring myself a glass of crisp Navarro white.
I was getting used to sitting on the patio with my glass of wine in the evenings. And it occurred to me, as I sat there once again, that there was an unrivalled peacefulness to the Villa Naranja that I’d miss back in Dublin. Despite my somewhat manic insistence on doing up the house and garden, I’d also learned to sit still as dusk fell, and to be comfortable in my own company. I’d never been able to do that before. I’d always had to have the TV on, or tap away at my iPad, or go out and meet people. But now I was accustomed to being on my own, doing nothing, calmed by the chirping of the crickets and Banquo’s purrs as he lay across my feet.
My iPhone pinged with a WhatsApp from Pep. He said that he had nearly finished the work for his aunt and hoped to be back in Beniflor in a day or two. I sent him a happy-faced emoji in reply. And he sent one of two hearts to me.
I looked at it for a long time before sending the same to him in return.
Max arrived at exactly twelve thirty p.m. the following day. He rang the bell at the gates and I walked out to open them with the fob. He drove in and parked alongside the house.
‘It’s beautiful,’ he said as he got out of the car and looked around. ‘When you said you were staying in a villa, I never imagined anything like this.’
I glowed with a proprietorial pride. After all of my work, both inside and out, the Villa Naranja had lost its air of benign neglect and was looking more like a cared-for home. I was tempted to give him the villa’s history, but he was holding the passenger door open for me so instead I just got into the car.
Max was a careful but competent driver as he followed my instructions to the coast, and when we pulled up outside the restaurant that Ana Perez had brought me to a couple of weeks earlier he parked the car in a tight space with practised ease.
Brad had hated driving, even though he practically commuted from Belfast to Dublin.
‘It’s stressful,’ he’d said. ‘And a waste of time. I’d much rather take the train and do something useful while I’m on the move.’
But then he was the sort of man who didn’t waste a minute. He liked to pack things in. Including a wife and a mistress.
I hadn’t made a reservation at the restaurant and panicked when I saw that it was already busy, but Iker, the owner, remembered me and smiled in welcome.
‘You came with Ana,’ he said. ‘You’re staying at Doña Carmen’s house.’
It always amused me how everyone in Beniflor knew the house by the older woman’s name. Somehow, Ana’s mother – Pilar’s grandmother – had left her mark on it, and that was how it was remembered. Not as the Perez house. Not as the Villa Naranja. But as Doña Carmen’s.
‘I have a good table for you,’ Iker told us. ‘Not the best but good.’
It was the last available table on the deck.
‘Stunning,’ said Max as we sat down facing the azure-blue sea. ‘Really stunning.’
A young waiter brought us a large jug of iced water and Max asked if we could have some tapas. ‘When in Spain,’ he added. I suggested more or less the same as I’d had with Ana, although without the mussels. When I mentioned them, Max made a face and said they weren’t exactly his thing. But he urged me to order them if I wanted, and I grinned and said that I was just trying to appear sophisticated about it but they weren’t exactly my thing, either.
‘This is living the dream,’ he said as he helped himself instead to a slice of wafer-thin Serrano ham. ‘What more could you ask for than good food in a stunning location?’
I said nothing.
‘Oh God.’ He grimaced. ‘That was bloody insensitive. This isn’t what you dreamed of at all, was it?’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘But . . . well, if I had to have a hideaway, Beniflor is certainly an excellent one.’
After that stumbling block our conversation flowed more easily. We became comfortable in each other’s company, while keeping to topics that were safe – summer holidays, books we’d read and movies we’d seen.
‘I prefer th
eatre to the movies,’ Max remarked as the waiter brought us coffee. ‘I like being close to the actors. But I’m also intrigued by everything that goes on offstage.’
‘Me, too!’ I looked at him in surprise. ‘My mum despairs of me when I say that. She wants me to be lost in the world. Yet I get too distracted.’
‘Is your mum a theatregoer, then?’ he asked.
‘She . . .’ I hesitated. I rarely told people who Mum was. It always felt a bit boasty to talk about her, as though I was trying to bask in her reflected glory.
Max was looking at me expectantly.
‘She’s an actress,’ I said. ‘She did a lot of theatre work.’
‘How exciting. Would I know her?’
‘Her name is Thea Ryan.’
His eyes widened. ‘Thea Ryan who played Lady Macbeth at the Abbey?’ he asked, with an almost reverential hush to his voice. ‘The Thea Ryan who won an award for her Lady Bracknell, and who gave an outstanding performance as Masha in Three Sisters?’
‘That’s Mum.’ I nodded.
‘She’s amazing,’ he said. ‘Such a great presence onstage.’
‘She’d be delighted to hear that,’ I said.
‘Is she working now?’ he asked.
I told him about Clarendon Park, and then added that Mum would also be playing Lady Bracknell again soon.
‘I’ll definitely go and see that,’ he said. ‘As for Clarendon Park, I’ve heard of it but never watched it. I must tune in.’
‘It’s just a soap,’ I reminded him. ‘Not Chekhov.’
He laughed. ‘I bet she’s great anyway. And you have no desire to be onstage yourself?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m a radiographer. I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. No imagination, either.’
‘That’s not true,’ he said. ‘From what you’ve said you’re single-handedly renovating the villa, and it looks fantastic – so that’s artistic, in a way. And having a scientific background doesn’t mean a lack of imagination. Far from it. Brad always said you had to think intuitively to work in medicine.’
‘Intuition isn’t imagination,’ I pointed out.
‘Of course it is,’ he said. ‘It’s seeing things another way, and if that isn’t imagination, I don’t know what is.’
I looked at him in an almost stunned silence as the image of Magda Burnaia turning over the tarot card to reveal the tower being struck by lightning flashed in front of me. My entire relationship with my family had been built on their shared creative imaginations and my utter lack of one. My inadequacies as a daughter and a sister, as one of the artistic Ryans, all stemmed from the fact that I lived in a world very different to theirs, a world I would never be able to share. Yet Max Hollander had changed all that in a single sentence.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked when I didn’t speak
‘Yes . . . Yes. You just turned a lifetime of belief on its head, that’s all.’
‘And is that good or bad?’
‘Good.’ I smiled. ‘Really good.’
And it was. Crazy as it sounds, I suddenly felt a connection with my parents and my brother and sister that I’d never had before. I wasn’t imaginative. I wasn’t creative. But I was intuitive, and that tapped into the same stuff. I was one of them, after all.
Unaware of the profound impact he’d had, Max started talking again, this time about the kind of work he did for the various clients of his company. To my surprise I recognised some of the names he spoke about.
‘Do you work entirely with charities?’ I asked.
‘A not-for-profit isn’t necessarily a charity,’ he replied. ‘Some of the organisations are state-funded bodies. And there are times I don’t necessarily agree with their message. But mostly I do, and they’re great clients to have.’
‘So you’re creative too,’ I said. ‘I always thought that being an artist was more noble than being a practical person. But today you’re making me realise that the line between the two can be blurred. And that practical can have creative outcomes too.’
‘Now I’ve got you talking in corporate-speak,’ he said.
I laughed. ‘Never!’
We ordered more coffee as we continued chatting, and then I realised that the restaurant was almost empty and only one other table was occupied.
‘We’d better go,’ I said.
Max waved for the bill and refused my attempt to split it, reminding me that he’d offered to take me to lunch. Then he drove back to the Villa Naranja.
‘It really is picture-postcard perfect,’ he said, as we sat outside the villa in the air-conditioned comfort of his hire car. ‘Eternally traditional.’
‘Would you like to have a look around?’ I asked.
‘If you don’t mind.’
‘Of course not.’
He switched off the engine.
Banquo came rushing through the orange trees and skidded to a stop in front of me. His slanted eyes looked between me and Max, then he languidly lifted a leg and started washing himself.
‘Oh, please!’ I cried. ‘We’ve got visitors, Banquo. Be nice.’
‘You’re a child of the theatre, after all,’ said Max. ‘I don’t know many cats named after a literary ghost.’
‘It seemed apt,’ I said. ‘When I first came here I thought the house . . . well, I didn’t think it was haunted exactly, but it was certainly spooky.’ I explained how Banquo’s nocturnal visits had scared me witless.
Max laughed.
‘That’s not very caring of you,’ I remarked. ‘I could’ve died of fright.’
‘I can’t see it, somehow,’ said Max.
‘That’s because you haven’t heard about the execution,’ I said.
He looked at me, and I grinned. Then I led him to the sundial beneath the jacaranda tree and told him the story of Ana’s grandfather.
‘My God,’ he said as he inspected the flagstone. ‘That’s chilling.’
‘Obviously, I don’t believe in ghosts or spirits,’ I said. ‘But I guess there might be a . . . a resonance still here. Although less so now that I’ve taken the house in hand.’
The two of us looked back at the Villa Naranja, majestic in the afternoon sun.
‘I don’t believe in them either,’ said Max. ‘But I can understand the need to connect with someone who’s gone. I didn’t feel that way about my dad, because I grew up without him. But it’s taking time to accept that I’ll never see Brad again.’
I remembered resenting the grief that Brad’s family had been allowed to show. I was ashamed of myself.
‘Can I see inside?’ asked Max.
I hadn’t intended to show him the interior of the Villa Naranja. But I nodded. ‘Of course.’
I felt an enormous sense of pride as I stepped through the door. The downstairs interior walls were now white, with an almost imperceptible hint of blue, which made the space look bigger and brighter. I’d rummaged around in the airing cupboard and found a linen tablecloth with midnight-blue embroidery, which I’d ironed and put on the pine dining table. I’d also found a glass vase and filled it with flowers that I’d bought at the Beniflor market. The blue and white echoed the tiles in the kitchen and linked the two rooms far more effectively than before. Meanwhile, I’d bought some inexpensive white throws, which I’d placed over the armchairs and the living-room sofas, and added a couple of bright-blue cushions.
‘This is lovely,’ said Max. ‘Really pretty.’
‘I was trying to reflect the white walls and blue roof tiles that are typical of this area,’ I explained. ‘It doesn’t entirely gel with the terracotta floors, but I didn’t think Ana would be too keen on ripping them out.’
‘You’re sure you’re a radiographer and not an interior designer?’ he asked.
‘It’s just a lick of paint,’ I said. ‘But it does make a difference. You should’ve seen it before.’
‘Have you done everywhere?’ he asked.
‘This is as far as I’ve got. Upstairs is still the way it was. You can take a look, if
you like.’
We went up and I brought him into one of the unused bedrooms. It looked gloomy and unwelcoming after the brightness downstairs.
‘It’s sort of authentic, I suppose,’ said Max. ‘In a trapped-in-the-seventies kind of way.’
‘But that’s not a way most people want,’ I said. ‘When the family moved out they took their main pieces of furniture with them, and they didn’t bother upgrading because they reckoned it didn’t matter for rentals. They’re wrong, though. Most people want to stay in a beautiful place with decent facilities and furniture.’
He nodded.
‘But you can access the balcony from the bedrooms, and there’s also a magnificent bathroom.’
I opened the French door that led to the balcony, and he exclaimed in delight at the mountain view.
‘The problem, according to Ana, is that most people want views of the sea,’ I explained. ‘That’s partly why she’s had trouble selling it.’
‘If she upgraded the bedrooms, like you’ve done downstairs, I bet she’d have no trouble,’ declared Max. ‘Can I see the bathroom?’
I recounted the exploits of the leaking roof as we went back inside – although, obviously, I omitted to mention that the night had ended up with me and Pep Navarro in bed together. Max was enthusiastic about the big bathroom and, like me, was taken with the novelty of being able to look across towards the town as you showered. He stumbled slightly as he turned away from the window and grimaced in pain.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked.
‘Sore foot,’ he said. ‘It’s fine some of the time, and then it starts to hurt.’
I’d noticed an almost imperceptible favouring of his left leg when he’d walked ahead of me earlier but hadn’t said anything.
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘Oh, just when I put pressure on it. I’ve probably pulled something.’
‘Do you play sport?’
‘Mostly I go to the gym,’ he said. ‘I’ve been doing some running over the last few weeks.’
‘On the treadmill or the road?’
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